In the US, we have clients that question us all the time about odd 'invoices' they receive in the mail from 'domain registration' companies to see if they are legitimate. Usually 99% of these invoices are not 'real invoices' but rather shady and misleading contracts with odd wording that have the client unintentionally switch domain registrars, change hosting, etc... with exorbitant fees.

I wonder if the scammer might be targeting existing Opencart stores in the UK with these types of fake invoices.

If this is the case, he might be digging his own grave. Some of the people he is sending invoices to will probably question the reason for the invoice. Those people will probably end up contacting your company asking about the invoice at which point they can be alerted that the invoice is not legitimate and did not come from your company. That's going to put the scammer in an interesting predicament legally if people start reporting him to the authorities.

As you already sent your opinion here to all users, about our company we would like to add the following just for second thought.

The company is registered since 2013 and used without any invoice as OpenCart even if the domain is opencartgreece.gr.
The company OpenCart LTD is already registered 100% legally in UK and in Greece is registered as Botonakis Web Development and invoicing as this name. Your company in UK is registered as OpenCart Cloud Limited.
The only issue we had and been already advised was the logo and the similarities of it and removed by a temporary version. The usage of the logo was after you made our company official Greek Partner (now you removed it).

Files, invoices, hosting, services and all the information shared are our creation and never invoiced as OpenCart as you said or used this name. Also, we have proof of the opposite. Do you have proof of what your are claiming?

As for addition we had proof for no paid extensions sales, banned accounts with no reason by yourself and threatening emails by you.

I have attached part of my company registration in Hong Kong that was registered 2012! (i have not included the full version for security).

opencart br.jpg (152.14 KiB) Viewed 10700 times

Your company in UK is registered as OpenCart Cloud Limited.

OpenCart cloud is my 2nd company! it was registered in the UK because my 2 other partners in this company are UK based. It was Incorporated on March 2015.

It is illegal to register a company name or trademark that is already in use! now maybe your argument would work out if we didn't have any customers in the UK but since we are no 2 in the UK in terms of people using opencart over other ecommerce scripts and your well aware of the opencart brand being used in the UK. As i said in my previous posts i have contracts going back since and before the company was registered.

plus 10,000's of people in the uk running stores with the word "powered by opencart" on them since 2005.

you seem to be picking out laws that suit your needs and ignore the ones that won't. such as applying to register a company also implies copyright over said name!

The company is registered since 2013 and used without any invoice as OpenCart even if the domain is opencartgreece.gr.

you mean the domain name was registered since 2013. i have one registered in 2004.

you registered the company Oct 2015 (3 months ago).

Files, invoices, hosting, services and all the information shared are our creation and never invoiced as OpenCart as you said or used this name. Also, we have proof of the opposite. Do you have proof of what your are claiming?

I have the emails from you telling me that is why you registered the company!

your own words:

The company was registered by our company lawyer and not by me. The reason was 100% invoicing in UK.

if this is not true then so what is the reason you registered the same name company? let me guess, steal the brand!

This is disturbing and not on at all, however, AFAIK, unless there is a registered trademark OpenCart ™ or another UK registered company name that is very similar to the one being registered 'OpenCart Limited' in the UK, then there is nothing stopping someone registering that UK Ltd company.

Of course, it is down to the judge to decide finally and it will most likely be a time consuming, expensive case to fight.

I do agree that OpenCart is widely known around the world and attempting to register OpenCart in UK is very misleading. It may lead others to think that the registered UK company belongs to Daniel as well.

To not waste each other's time, I think botonakis should consider dropping the name in UK and discuss it privately with Daniel.

I've had issues like this before, but fortunately did not have to go to court as a simple letter to the perpetrator solve the issue. It is called 'Passing Off' - perhaps a term that is not well known in Greece

mrbill wrote:I've had issues like this before, but fortunately did not have to go to court as a simple letter to the perpetrator solve the issue. It is called 'Passing Off' - perhaps a term that is not well known in Greece

When it is the same industry as in this case (i.e. software) - it is a no brainer. Gets a bit more complex when the companies are in different industries. This is a fairly famous case with some fairly large players: